Aydan Özoğuz

Aydan Özoğuz (2015)

Aydan Saliha Özoğuz ( German pronunciation: listen ^{? / I} ) (born May 31, 1967 in Hamburg ) is a German politician ( SPD ). She was a member of the Hamburg Parliament from 2001 to 2008 and has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2009 . From 2011 to 2017 she was one of the deputy federal chairmen of the SPD and from 2013 to 2018 the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration .

Life

Youth, studies and work

Özoğuz's parents moved from Istanbul to Hamburg in 1961 to set up a hazelnut import company . She grew up in Hamburg-Lokstedt and graduated from high school in Corveystraße in 1986 . She then began studying English , Spanish and human resources management at the University of Hamburg , which she completed in 1994 with a Magistra Artium . During her studies she was a member of the Turkish Student Union Hamburg and was its chairman for two years. Since 1989 she has had both Turkish and German citizenship .

From 1994 to 2009 she coordinated integration projects as a research assistant for the Körber Foundation . With the acceptance of her Bundestag mandate, she was released from the Körber Foundation.

Political offices and mandates

Aydan Özoğuz in the German Bundestag, 2019

At the suggestion of state chairman Olaf Scholz , she stood as a non-party candidate in the 2001 mayor election on the SPD state list and moved into the Hamburg parliament . In the 17th electoral term she was a member of the School Committee and the European Committee.

In the 2004 mayoral elections, she ran as a non-party to fourth place on the SPD state list and was again part of the Hamburg parliament. In the 18th electoral term she was a member of the Interior Committee, the Family, Children and Youth Committee, the Social Committee and the Submission Committee. She was also the migration policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group.

In 2004 she joined the SPD. In the 2008 general election she ran for second place in the Rahlstedt constituency . However, she missed the re-entry into the Hamburg citizenship because Ole Thorben Buschhüter and Günter Frank received more votes than they did.

For the 2009 Bundestag election , she was elected on February 14th of the year by the regional assembly of representatives of the SPD Hamburg to place 2 on the state list. She won the vote against Sylvia Wowretzko with 216 to 102 votes. In the 2009 Bundestag election she entered the German Bundestag . Since the SPD direct candidates only won three of the six Hamburg constituencies, a candidate entered the Bundestag for the first time since 1987 via the SPD state list. In the Bundestag, she became a member of the Committee on Family, Seniors, Women and Youth and the Enquete Commission on the Internet and Digital Society . She also became deputy spokeswoman for the parliamentary group's working group on migration and integration.

On March 2, 2010, the SPD parliamentary group appointed Özoğuz as the parliamentary group's integration officer . In March 2011, in this capacity, she advised German Muslims to boycott the German Islam Conference convened by Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich , because Friedrich had declared it to be a “security partnership” with the state against Islamists . The call to boycott met with incomprehension and criticism in parts of the CDU and the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion .

Aydan Özoğuz opens the SPD federal party conference on December 10, 2015 in Berlin as Deputy Federal Chairwoman

From December 2011 to December 2017 she was one of the six deputy federal chairmen of the SPD. She was the first woman of Turkish descent in the party leadership of the SPD. From June 2013 to April 2015 she was the founding chair of the Migration and Diversity Working Group.

In the 2013 federal elections , she headed the Hamburg state list and was elected as a direct candidate for the Bundestag with 39.9 percent of the first votes in the constituency of Wandsbek . After the federal election in 2013, she succeeded Maria Böhmer in the Merkel III cabinet as the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration with the rank of Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor .

In the 2017 federal elections , she again topped the Hamburg state list and was re-elected as a direct candidate in the Bundestag with 34.6 percent of the first votes in the Wandsbek constituency. In the coalition negotiations on the composition of the Merkel IV cabinet , she was not given a new office. In the 19th electoral term she is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid . She is also the deputy spokesperson for the parliamentary group's working group on migration and integration.

Positions and reactions to them

The focus of Özoğuz's work is integration policy ; she takes the view that Germany is not a secular state. The parliamentary state secretary for finance Jens Spahn criticized that Özoğuz had spent too often state money in her function on structures and associations that rely on isolation instead of integration.

At the beginning of November 2016, she spoke out against a general ban on child marriages , as it could “push young women into social marginalization” in individual cases: “If their marriages are revoked, they lose, among other things, maintenance and inheritance claims, their children would be illegitimate, for many that would even make a return to their home countries impossible ”. This attitude met with criticism from the CDU and CSU .

In November 2016, on the occasion of a major raid in several federal states against the Salafist group " The True Religion ", which had previously been banned by the Interior Ministry, she called on the security authorities to act with a "sense of proportion" so that it does not mean that mosques are being arbitrarily penetrated. Criticism came from the then CSU regional group leader Gerda Hasselfeldt , who accused her of “misunderstood tolerance”, from the head of the German police union, Rainer Wendt , and from CDU general secretary Peter Tauber . He said that instead of being grateful to the security authorities for their work, Özoğuz kicked them "in the shin". Özoğuz said that she had a high level of confidence in the work of the security authorities. Every successful strike against radical Salafists is important and a great success in the fight against religious extremism. But raids alone cannot prevent the radicalization of young people. Rather, prevention work is required for this. The fight against the Islamists can only be won together with the Muslims. One commentator pointed out that demanding a sense of proportion does not usually lead to violent outbreaks and - even if the Federal Ministry of the Interior has probably examined the question of proportionality - others are not forbidden to ask about it.

In February 2017, Özoğuz presented a “model for immigration” developed by a 39-person commission chaired by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung . Originally, the Council for Migration e. V. asked the Bundestag to create such a model, but it did not react. Among other things, the paper calls for migration not to be perceived as a threat, but as a process to be shaped politically. It describes a society “that excludes no one and can be shaped for the benefit of all”. Since personal and collective identities are always changing, there is no such thing as a “German identity that is valid for everyone” in the sense of a so-called guiding culture . According to Sandra Stalinski (tagesschau.de), the concept mainly consists of common places; the integration researcher Friedrich Heckmann assessed it as "not very helpful". The mission statement calls for local voting rights for immigrants without German citizenship. Peter Beuth ( CDU ), Hans-Peter Uhl ( CSU ) and Frauke Petry ( AfD ) criticized this part of the paper in particular, Uhl calling the proposal unconstitutional.

In May 2017, Özoğuz said that the demands for a “German guiding culture” were wrong, as the proposals to fill this term with content would become “a cliché of being German”. This is not surprising either, since “a specifically German culture […], beyond the language, is simply not identifiable”. Rather, different regional cultures and immigration would have shaped the cultural history of Germany. Globalization as well as the pluralization of living environments led to “a further multiplication of diversity”, which is “also exhausting”, but at the same time constitutes “the strength of our nation as an open society”. The evocation of a leading culture, on the other hand, excludes instead of creating common ground. As an alternative, Özoğuz pleaded for the constitutional norms of the Basic Law as a framework for coexistence.

Alexander Gauland commented on the reference to the "non-identifiable specifically German culture" on August 26, 2017 at an election campaign event of the AfD in Leinefelde-Worbis as follows:

“That's what a German-Turkish woman says. Invite her to Eichsfeld and tell her what specifically German culture is. After that it will never come back here and we will then, thank God, be able to dispose of it in Anatolia . "

Investigations against Gauland for sedition following this statement were discontinued without result.

Private

In 2002 Özoğuz married Michael Neumann (SPD), who later became Hamburg's Senator for the Interior . They have a child together. In January 2017, the couple announced their split. She is a Muslim . Her brothers Yavuz and Gürhan Özoğuz , among other things, run the Islamist Internet portal Muslim-Markt , from whose content she has distanced herself. Two of her cousins ​​formed the ska-punk band Athena .

Web links

Commons : Aydan Özoğuz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Personal website
• Biography at the German Bundestag
• Aydan Özoğuz on parliamentwatch.de
• Literature by and about Aydan Özoğuz in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Aydan Özoğuz munzinger.de
2. ↑ FOCUS Online: Aydan Özoguz: I am a Muslim. But I also love to celebrate Christmas . In: FOCUS Online . ( focus.de [accessed on May 24, 2018]).
3. ↑ person oezoguz.de
4. ↑ Hamburg's SPD nominates citizenship candidates mopo.de, May 4, 2001
5. ^ Six new ones and Mr. Hafen for Mirow taz.de, January 20, 2004
6. ↑ Acts directly taz.de, February 29, 2008
7. ↑ SPD elects Olaf Scholz as the top candidate welt.de, February 28, 2009
8. ↑ Appointed integration commissioner of the SPD parliamentary group! oezoguz.de, March 3, 2010
9. ↑ A boycott by the SPD causes a scandal. In: Handelsblatt , March 30, 2011.
10. ^ Friederike Freiburg: SPD calls on Muslims to boycott the Islam Conference. In: Spiegel Online , March 30, 2011.
11. ↑ Gröhe: Call to boycott the Islam Conference unspeakable. In: Münchner Merkur , March 30, 2011.
12. ↑ SPD elects top - Aydan Özoguz joins the board of badische-zeitung.de, December 5, 2011
13. ↑ Özoguz stops as SPD vice - Kohnen is to follow handelsblatt.com, November 13, 2017
14. ↑ Aydan Özoguz as chairwoman of the Migration and Diversity Working Group adopted vorwaerts.de, April 27, 2015
15. ↑ Mayor Scholz throws himself into the election campaign mopo.de, February 17, 2013
16. ^ Özoguz first Minister of State of Turkish origin, Abendblatt.de, December 16, 2013
17. ^ Özoguz at the head of the Hamburg SPD mopo.de, December 10, 2016
18. ^ How the coalition fulfilled a terrible AfD demand sueddeutsche.de, May 7, 2018
19. ↑ ^{a b} CICERO (issue 5/2011): Aydan Özoguz - Deern with background
20. ↑ Jens Spahn in an interview: “We got the message from the AfD voters” . Die Welt, October 22, 2017.
21. ↑ The integration officer rejects a blanket ban on child marriages. In: Spiegel online. Retrieved November 3, 2016 . 
22. ↑ After "sense of proportion" demand: Özoguz responds to criticism of the Union. In: sueddeutsche.de. November 16, 2016, accessed November 17, 2016 . 
23. ↑ After "sense of proportion" demand: Özoguz responds to criticism of the Union. In: SZ-Online. November 16, 2016.
24. ^ Paul Munzinger: Debate about Aydan Özoğuz: Questions must be allowed . In: sueddeutsche.de . November 16, 2016.
25. ↑ the text comprises two pages. The commission consisted of representatives from the SPD and various social sectors (source: tagesschau.de ). She had been appointed by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
26. ↑ Andrea Dernbach: Small Basic Law for the Colorful Republic of Germany. In: tagesspiegel.de . February 14, 2017. Retrieved February 15, 2017 . 
27. ↑ Sandra Stalinski: Mission statement for immigration: "Hard questions are left out". In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved February 15, 2017 . 
28. ^ Right to vote without a German passport: "Özoguz proposal is unconstitutional". In: welt.de. Retrieved February 19, 2017 . 
29. ^ Power struggle in the AfD: Rumors of expulsion about André Poggenburg shz.de from February 19, 2017.
30. ↑ Aydan Özoğuz: Social contract instead of leading culture - leading culture degenerates into the cliché of being German . In: Tagesspiegel Causa . May 14, 2017. Retrieved September 3, 2017.
31. ^ Gauland: Dispose of Özoguz in Anatolia FAZ, August 28, 2017
32. ↑ Alexander Gauland and the "Vogelschiss" Der Tagesspiegel, June 2, 2018
33. ↑ Aydan Özoğuz, SPD. In: bundestag.de .
34. ↑ Peter Ulrich Meyer: Michael Neumann and Aydan Özoguz have separated. In: Abendblatt.de. Retrieved January 16, 2017 . 
35. ↑ Özoguz distances himself from radical Islamic brothers. In: The world . October 30, 2010.
36. ↑ Refugees and Integration - Can We Do It? In: Deutschlandfunk . May 14, 2016.
37. ↑ freedom. Cowardice. Multicultural. Conversation with Aydan Özoguz and Michael Neumann. In: taz . January 8, 2005.
38. ↑ Interview with Aydan Özoğuz and Michael Neumann: Freedom. Cowardice. Multicultural . The daily newspaper from January 8, 2005